Absolutely No Soliciting

Ruminant With A View

by Elizabeth Boleman-Herring

TEANECK, NJ—(Weekly Hubris)—12/20/10—I was going to title this column “Leave My God-D^%$ed Soul Alone.” But that seemed a little harsh. Especially at Christmas. Or Hanukkah. Or Ramadan. Or Insert-Whatever-Religious-Winter-Solstice-Holiday-You-Celebrate (or vehemently don’t celebrate).

In addition, I find it more difficult to swear like a sailor in print than I do in person. I spent the first 18 years of my life encased in virtual crinolines: never uttering nor hearing a four-letter-word; not owning a pair of trousers. I know it’s head-spinningly difficult for some to conceive of how fast and far women have come in my own little lifetime. But, there it is. I now swear all the doo-dah day, own practically no dresses, and never attend church. Never.

I really don’t like the company of most of the people I’ve found huddling in churches.

Nurtured in the huge Presbyterian “bastions against sin” (my father’s term) of Los Angeles and Chicago, respectively, I left my pew for good at 14, when the ministers of “Fourth Pres,” who’d just graduated me at the top of my communicants’ class, couldn’t answer any of my existential questions. That they couldn’t answer them doesn’t now surprise me. No one can. That they knew me and my family and didn’t see those questions coming, and have some sort of defensive strategy, is mind-boggling.

Since I left The Church, and churches, ashrams, madrasas, temples, etc., in general, many, many people, some of them my own blood relatives (though I should probably have asked them for some I.D.), and even some atheists, have tried to convert me to their own beliefs. In fact, my friends the atheists don’t believe what they don’t believe more vehemently than many of the other spiritual rapists I’ve encountered.

Spiritual rapists? Surely, I exaggerate! But no, in fact, the worst experience I had with a would-be saver-cum-rapist of my soul occurred when my father died (I was 20), and my uncle locked himself into the family sedan with me and vowed to remain there until I accepted Christ as my savior. I wish I could say I threw up my hands immediately, cried out, “You win! I’m saved!” and got on with grieving my parent. But no, I was an earnest, honest child. I sat in there with him for hours debating, till he convinced me I was going to hell.

One of the worst days of my life.

So, it is little wonder that, as an adult, I have so little patience for those convinced they’ve seen the light, and are hell-bent on showing it to me.

I’ve been assaulted at the door by Jevohavah’s Witnesses, a very well-named group. Boy, do they ever witness! I’ve been called on the carpet by Baptists. The Born Again of all stripes have shown me the error of my ways. Even one Yoga teacher insisted I could not, would not, graduate from her teachers’ class unless I learned, and sang, the “Prayer to Patanjali,” a being, half human and half serpent, who is patently as “historical” as the gryphon.

No longer 18, I do not now take kindly to such invasions of my spiritual privacy, and I do not think any of us should. Most of us are kind and evasive when faced, at our doors, with a pair of Witnesses. I, on the other hand, believe we should assure them it is we who have seen God’s numbered, secret list (and Santa’s), and they are not on it.

Come to my door peddling religion, will you!? I think not, My Pretties!

If I weren’t so furious about this sort of spiritual assault, I’d print out something and carry it around with me (this column springs to mind), and silently hand it to the next lunatic who believes his/her soul is saved, but mine is not—and wants to discuss it all with me.

I “read in the Spirit” every day. Well, almost every day of my life. My most personal book shelf (right next to me here in my study) is full of titles such as Reaching for the Invisible God, The Mystics, The Sufis, The Spell of The Sensuous, Your God is Too Small, The Space Within The Heart, A Path With Heart, Light on Pranayama, and everything Jung ever wrote, etc., etc.

It has been my life’s work to find faith; to reach enlightenment; to know God, if God is knowable. And I’m not there, yet, Brother. I’m not there, yet, Sister. And, considering the weight of my grey matter, if you’re there, and I’m not, you’re not going to be the one to save me. Trust me. I don’t really know how God rolls, but I pretty much know how He doesn’t.

Still, I will probably die with a “holy” book in my hands—not the Old Testament or the New, but a book all the same, and I think God, if there is a God, will cut me some slack. (Not so, the televangelists. Not so, those in Rome who believe in papal infallibility. Not so the Taliban, who’ll cut off your head if you don’t convert. NOT the way He rolls, Boys! And Mercy, Mercy, when he meets up with YOU!)

Still, speaking of the Old Testament, come to my door to tell me you’re saved, and I’m not, or to ask me about the state of my soul, eager to tell me about the exalted state of your own relationship with The Personal God, with your own Savior, and I am very likely to go all medieval on your buttocks.

I am likely to rise up in fury and quote someone else who overstepped his bounds and brought down, well, the wrath of God: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? . . . Where were you when [God] laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know! . . . What is the way to the place where the light is distributed, or where the east wind is scattered upon the earth? . . . Shall a faultfinder contend with the almighty? He who argues with god, let him answer it.”

All from Job 38 and 39, by the way, in case you were wondering. And, if I could summon the voice of Whoopi Goldberg in a snit, that’s how I’d deliver my oration—at full throttle.

Cause I take my Spirit seriously. It’s not something you peddle door to door like vinyl siding . . .

. . . and because faith is not like some virus you can breathe into your neighbor’s lung. It is not some fire you can set in your neighbor’s garage. It is not some crabgrass you can root in your neighbor’s garden.

Faith, I believe, is like Grace. Faith is Grace. If you don’t have it, there is only one way you can get it, and it sure isn’t coming by FedEx, UPS, or via that demented Jehovah’s Witness two doors down.

My mother had faith. My father had faith. Even my son-of-a-b&^ch uncle seems to have had faith (though I think he was more interested in the power that comes from having a pulpit of your own, a luxury God was careful not to afford him).

I don’t “have faith.” Yet. Or, if I do, it’s faith as fragile and delicate as a mustard seed, and you best not be blowing on it; huffing and puffing. For that is the very best way I know of to sour me on the thing; the very best way to put out the light not lit by human hands.

So, No Soliciting at this house. Wouldn’t be prudent

Your Post Script of Zen: “One old Hasidic rabbi asked his pupils how they could tell when the night had ended and the day had begun, for that is the time for certain holy prayers. ‘Is it,’ proposed one student, ‘when you can see an animal in the distance and tell whether it is a sheep or a dog?’ ‘No,” answered the rabbi. ‘Is it when you can clearly see the lines on your own palm?’ ‘Is it when you can look at a tree in the distance and tell if it is a fig or a pear tree?’ ‘No,’ answered the rabbi. ‘It is when you can look on the face of any man or woman and see that they are your sister or brother. Until then it is night.’” —from After the Ecstasy, the Laundry: How the Heart Grows Wise on the Spiritual Path, by Jack Kornfield